When Decca
put on a launch in London for its starry new signing, the American tenor NoahStewart, technology malfunctioned. The video broke down, the dry ice played up
and the microphone went on the blink. Perhaps that was the intervention of
fate. After navigating some Puccini, plus ‘Nights in White Satin’ in Italian,
Stewart ditched the dodgy microphone for ‘Amazing Grace’. Now the whole room realised
that this man could really, seriously sing.

His
first solo album hasn’t malfunctioned at all. It has whooshed to no.1 in the
classical charts, making Stewart the first black artist ever to top that
category. Meanwhile he has been attracting attention in opera. He made his
Covent Garden debut last month, in Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune; he sang Lieutenant Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at Opera North; and he is
currently in Detroit, tackling The Pearl
Fishers by Bizet for the first time. Later this month he’ll be back in the UK for his
first solo tour.

Still, to
misquote Joanna Trollope, it can take years to become an overnight success. Stewart’s
journey may have landed him a five-CD recording contract – “a dream come true,”
he says – but he’s had more than his fair share of tough times.

Stewart
grew up in Harlem, the son of a single mother who worked as a cashier in a
supermarket. He owes everything to her devotion, he says; she made sure he went
to a good school and put his education first. When he was 12 a teacher recruited
him for the school choir, with encouraging words about his voice. His mother thought
he would be a comedian, “because I always loved making people laugh”; and young
Noah, testing his wings in musical theatre, found he loved acting. “I was quite
heavy as a kid, and I was happier playing someone else,” he admits.

His
first passion was jazz, not least thanks to his mother’s New Orleans
background. Then, attending an arts school, he spotted a laserdisc of the Verdi
Requiem with a picture of the great mezzo-soprano Leontyne Price on the cover.
“She was the only person of colour in the image and I was immediately drawn to
it.” The performance proved a giant shockwave: “It was the first time I heard a
person of colour sing with an operatic technique in a different language. The
combination of the voice and the orchestra drew me in immediately. Everyone
around me in high school wanted to be a pop star or a gospel star. But I felt
that, for me, this was the way to go. It wasn’t a road much travelled.”

Role
models were few. “I didn’t see images of any coloured men singing opera. I knew
about Paul Robeson, Bobby McFerrin, Marian Anderson and Jessye Norman, but the
only tenor I could see was George Shirley, who retired from the stage when I
was in middle school. I heard an interview with Leontyne Price, recorded in the
1970s, in which she said ‘I wish there were more black men in opera – I wish
they would choose the operatic path.’ That only inspired me more to stick to it
even when times were bad and people wouldn’t give me a chance.”

He won a
scholarship to the Juilliard, New York’s most famous music college, but when he
wanted to go to the summer school at the Aspen Music Festival, his mother
couldn’t afford the fees. She wrote to the comedian Bill Cosby, who was
appearing at a nearby club, and took the letter round to the doorman herself.
Cosby sent a cheque. That summer in Aspen proved a seminal experience for
Stewart.

Breaking
into the profession later, though, proved so tough that his confidence
plummeted. While his former classmates were “ushered into theatres and young
artists programmes”, he received rejection after rejection. He reached
rock-bottom after auditioning for a conductor who told him he should reconsider
his decision to be a musician. For three years he took other jobs – as a
salesman, a restaurant host and a receptionist in Carnegie Hall, where his
supervisor ordered him to stop singing at work.

Finally,
after studying with a new vocal coach, he auditioned and was accepted for the young
artists’ programme at San Francisco Opera. There his big break arrived in
classic style: he was understudying Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth and had to stand in for the scheduled tenor at the last
moment. “After that people started talking. I was singing for artist managers
and so on, and they said, ‘Noah, where have you been?’” His answer: “Carnegie Hall!”

His
confidence came back. “I knew I had a lot to learn – but I knew that I could do
it, because I did it for myself. No-one gave me the opportunity; they needed me
and I was able to capitalise on that, but I was able to do it because I worked
for it.

“My mum
told me early on: ‘You are a black man. You have to be better at everything you
do.’ Not that I went around with a chip on my shoulder, but I knew I had to be
the best that I could be, so I lost weight and worked on my languages and took
coaching. My will and determination have just got stronger over time. People
think it’s a ‘rags-to-riches’ story, but it is totally not. I got a couple of
contracts, but when I wasn’t working I went back to the restaurant and back to
temping, because I was so thankful I’d learned some trades. Growing up in New
York was not only about education – it was also about how you survive as a
person.

“I’m not
Noah the Opera Singer; I’m Noah the Person who loves to sing opera. I love
jazz, I love hip hop, I’m a person with many different interests. I chose opera
because I didn’t see people who looked like me doing it. And I’ve developed
skills to be competitive. I’m still in love with it, but if it all fell apart
tomorrow I’d be OK, because I know who I am and I could develop other skills
and go into any profession I desired. There are so many young people now who
feel so lost and I always say to them: ‘You have so many abilities, you can do
anything you want to – just don’t stop believing.’”

What
would he say to opera buffs who, having heard him sing Puccini, Massenet and
Verdi, wonder why he’s also recording pop songs translated into Italian? “Just
because I sing opera, that doesn’t mean it’s the only style I enjoy,” he
insists. “I remember, early on, telling one a friend who was specialising in
musical theatre that I was going to sing a musical theatre song. She said: ‘You
can’t sing that – you’re an opera singer.’ And I thought maybe she’s right, maybe
I’m not going to be taken seriously. But how can I let someone else dictate my
life? If I want to sing a pop song, I’m going to sing a pop song! I’m going to
sing it in its correct style, put my own spin on it and make it mine.

“I’m
happy that I’ve lived a sheltered life, so I did not have people influencing
me. It wasn’t easy. I spent many times being alone while people made fun of me
because I didn’t dress or speak like a guy from Harlem. It’s hard being
different. But it’s much more fun. You get to create your own rules.”

Noah Stewart’s debut album is out
now on Decca. His UK tour begins on 17 May at The Sage, Gateshead

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Words for, with and about music: novels, stage works, biographies, classical music journalism. Libretto for 'Silver Birch', Roxanna Panufnik's opera for Garsington 2017 ("powerful and poetic" - The Times). Latest novel 'Ghost Variations', based on the Schumann Violin Concerto's 1930s rediscovery. Performing narrated concerts based on it ("highly moving" - Birmingham Post). Now crowdfunding 'Meeting Odette', a 21st-century fairytale.
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